Editorial | Plumbing the depths

Mark Felt, the government official known as Deep Throat, Bob Woodward's primary source during his and Carl Bernstein's investigation of the Nixon administration, knew the government was watching.

That's why he insisted on communications using clock faces drawn on newspapers, flags, flower pots, and nighttime meetings in an empty parking garage.

None of the controversies besetting the Obama administration rise to the level of Watergate, but efforts by President Barack Obama's Justice Department to get to the source of governmental leaks by spying on the media are troubling because they subvert one of the protections our founders found important enough to put in the First Amendment.

We recently learned that the DOJ secretly obtained call logs of home, office and cell phones used by Associated Press reporters and tracked the movement of Fox News' James Rosen and read his email following news stories based on classified information.

This information grab by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama Justice Department makes it more difficult for reporters to find out the things that the government doesn't want you to know about.

"Officials that would normally talk to us and people we talk to in the normal course of news gathering are already saying to us that they're a little reluctant to talk to us. They fear that they, they will be monitored by the government," AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt told Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation."

Mr. Obama and Mr. Holder must state clearly that they won't countenance another governmental assault on the media and will stop these Nixon-like attacks on basic freedoms.

Until they do, we all might want to break out the red flags and flower pots.

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Editorial | Plumbing the depths

Mark Felt, the government official known as Deep Throat, Bob Woodward's primary source during his and Carl Bernstein's investigation of the Nixon administration, knew the government was watching.